The Operating and Market Implementation committees heard first reading last week on proposed manual changes governing PJM’s acquisition and deployment of black start resources.

The revisions conform to proposed Tariff changes developed by the System Restoration Strategy Task Force to increase the pool of potential resources. PJM expects to lose some existing black start capacity by 2015 as a result of the planned retirements of coal-fired generators.

The Tariff changes were submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last month (ER13-1911).

Affected are manuals 12 and 27:

• Section 7 of Manual 27 allows the cost of cross-zonal black start units to be allocated to multiple zones based on transmission owners’ critical load share.
• Section 4.6 of Manual 12 governs the number of critical units in a zone and the ratio of black start generation to critical load in a zone. It also eliminates a restriction on the number of black start units at a station, allows units to provide service outside their zone and changes the time in which a unit must close to a dead bus.

The MIC will be asked to endorse the changes at its next meeting.

PJM Contact: Tom Hauske